


A Little Too Big

by quartetship



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 08:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6899032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quartetship/pseuds/quartetship
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“That shirt’s a little big for you, isn’t it?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Little Too Big

“That shirt’s a little big for you, isn’t it?”

It was the first time someone had bothered to say anything.

Jean was sure people had _noticed._ Ever since they’d packed up their belongings from the barracks that had housed them for their seasons as idealistic recruits, he’d had them in his possession. At first he’d told himself it was entirely practical. They were just going to be thrown out, anyway, owing to the fact that they no longer had an owner. So when the newly assigned soldiers cleaned beneath the beds and emptied the drawers in the room, he took the homeless articles of clothing with him. No sense in wasting resources, after all.

No one questioned that. No one even took a second look at him when on those first few nights in the new barracks, he cased his pillows with the shirts he’d kept. Cloth was cloth, after all. And this cloth smelled like comfort, calmness, and a sense of hope that seemed all but lost.

For the first few weeks, he convinced himself he’d have the shirts tailored down. They didn’t fit him properly, considering their original owner was at least two sizes larger than Jean. He would have them altered, and wear them the way they were meant to be worn.

But he never did.

After a while, it was glaringly obvious that there was nothing practical about his intentions. Jean knew the others had taken notice; how could they not? He slipped into the oversize shirts after a hard day, slept in them whenever he wished he could sleep in a pair of warm, strong arms instead. They were only clothes, but they were all he had left of a life that was gone forever. He held onto them like memories, careful not to let them fade or fray.

When he sat down for a late breakfast one morning with some of the others, he only remembered that he hadn’t bothered to change back into his own clothes when Sasha mentioned the way the soft green fabric hung off to one side at the neck, the neckline just a bit too wide for Jean’s slender shoulders. He shrugged and wiggled it back into place.

“It’s Marco’s.”

It _was_ Marco’s, his brain reminded him, but he didn’t correct himself, and Sasha didn’t ask anything further. She nodded, patted his shoulder and left him to eat, sitting in a shirt that Jean still didn’t consider his own, despite holding onto it for months by then. He knew Marco wasn’t coming back for it.

But Jean kept it anyway, acting as a steward of its care, as if one day he might. Sometimes Jean daydreamed as he curled up into the generous folds of fabric that had since ceased to smell like anyone other than him, what it would be like if Marco did return. He knew he’d give the shirts back, if Marco was there to ask him to.

After all, they really _were_ too big for Jean.


End file.
